“It’s more than you’d like to admit.”
Siddhu tossed his notebook in the air. “Sign me up,” he said. “I’ll volunteer too.”
Tso and Grossman clapped.
“Are you still going to write your article?” Tso asked. “Can you do that if you’re a volunteer?”
“It would be a violation of our code of ethics … except we don’t have one.”
Their laughter was airy. What strange times they were part of. They behaved with the recklessness of teenagers hunting for new ways to intoxicate themselves.
While waiting for their next call, the burner phone rang, and they recognized the caller: Farhad Khan. Grossman’s tenant asked them to meet him at an intersection in south Vancouver. They drove to an industrial area of the city until they reached a block with an auto-detailing business and a storage facility. Khan was waiting for them outside a white cube truck. He was dismayed not to see Rieux but asked them to climb into the cargo hold. “It will be a short ride. This is no way to treat friends, I know,” he said with a placating expression. “For your safety and protection, it is better for you to be hidden.”
“How well do you know this guy?” Siddhu said as he watched Grossman climb into the van.
“We’ve seen him at rock bottom. He always leaves you wanting to know more,” Grossman said. Khan had started the truck, and she waved at the others to hurry. “Come on, idling creates pollution.”
They sat on crates of wine that shifted in the dark. Their ride felt both brief but longer than they wanted it to be. When the door slid open, they found themselves in a warehouse. To one side were pallets loaded with alcohol and cigarettes. Khan led them to an interior office area. On their way, they passed racks of designer clothes, boots, shoes, and purses on shelves. Farther off, they saw antiques and, in a glass cage, a large, live lizard reclining under a heat lamp.
Khan enjoyed the awe they displayed at his collection. “We are going big,” he told them. “You never know when this will all end.”
Siddhu was the last to follow Khan into the warehouse office. Tso noticed his hands twitching by his sides as he resisted an urge to document this scene.
Inside the office, a man lay shivering under a blanket and was using an oxygen tank to breathe. He attempted to sit up when he saw them, but the exertion tired him so much that he needed to close his eyes.
“This man is my brother,” Khan said with such emphasis that Tso decided that he was not asserting a literal truth. “He is sick and needs help.” Tso began to speak when Khan raised his hand. “He is in trouble with the law. He is a good man, but he has made a mistake in the past. What is the point if he gets out of hospital only to walk into a jail?”
Khan suggested that Dr Rieux come to care for his so-called brother. Khan would provide whatever medicine or equipment was required. They would find a private nurse. “We just need a good doctor to make my brother healthy,” he told them. “You know if you take care of my friend, I will take care of you.”
“Do you get your goods by boat?” Siddhu asked. His attention still lay with the warehouse outside—the smuggling operation.
Khan shrugged. “Some of them. What do you need?”
He explained that his family was in Surrey. “What’s your price to get me back home?”
“It would be … significant,” Khan said. In his Costco-purchased clothing, Siddhu looked like someone whose wants exceeded his means. “The last time we tried we were almost caught.”
“What if Rieux helps with your … brother?” he whispered.
Khan’s nose lifted as though he was taking in the smell of a good idea. “Then it would be our gift to you, my friend.”
Grossman’s tenant guided them back to the cube truck. They rode in the darkness of the cargo hold again. When the door opened, they grimaced in the daylight and glare of grey ice.
As Grossman drove them back to the hotel, Siddhu remained silent. But his face seemed to glow as he processed the possibility, and risk, of an escape.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Grossman told them outside the hotel. “Once I drop off the phone with Rieux, I’m going to work on my book. I’ll sanitize, too. Is it weird to say I had a lot of fun?”
Siddhu suggested to Tso that they get dinner together in the hotel restaurant. The restaurant’s meals had deteriorated after a line cook fell ill. Thankfully, he’d gotten sick at home. The restaurant might have closed—although people had become lax with sanitary measures that had seemed ineffectual. They had already eaten every dish on the menu, continually revised and diminished, several times over.
Tso agreed to dinner but first wanted to change into a fresh set of clothes. Siddhu said he’d do the same.
“Do you hate me for wanting to leave?” Siddhu asked as they waited for the elevator. “You’ve hardly spoken to me.”
“I thought you were the one being quiet.”
“Who knows if Bernard will agree to help Khan’s friend? But I’ve been away from my family too long.” He leaned back against the elevator wall and sighed. “I want to help you guys too. Janice was right. Today was fun.”
“I’m not mad at you. I don’t think you’re wrong. I’ll just miss having someone to meet for drinks. And I think the judge has a crush on me, so … But you need to see your family. I get that.”
The elevator opened to their floor. Tso thought about the anemones in her room and felt her heart pulse as she stared down the hallway. Maybe it was the judge. “Would you mind coming to my door?” she asked Siddhu. She briefly explained about the flowers from last night. “It’s probably nothing.”
They arrived at her door. She inserted her card into the lock and stepped inside. The bed was made, the pile of used bath towels had been whisked from the floor, and the anemones remained on the desk where she left them. Nothing looked askance. She thanked Siddhu and told him to get a table downstairs. “Order me a rye and ginger if the server comes before I get there,” she added. “I won’t be long.”
She washed her hands and changed. Then she sat on the bed. It felt good to elevate her feet. Maybe she was invincible in addition to being noble. She had vanquished the dissatisfaction that had been following her around in the past couple of months and no longer felt too busy to be able to do anything well.
She was looking out the window when she heard buzzing. She’d left her phone on her desk by the flowers.
The Caller ID read “Unknown.” She knew better than to answer random callers, but if it was who she feared, she didn’t want to avoid him. She could only hope to put him off for so long. The voice was unmistakeable.
“Anemones are flowers for the forsaken,” he told her.
“Markus.”
“I missed your voice.”
“Where are you?” she asked. She needed to look up whether restraining orders could be enforced across countries.
“On your side of the gates,” he told her. “I could tell you needed me.”
Before he had hung up, she was out the door.
16.
New Year’s celebrations in Vancouver were more muted than usual. By year’s end, the death rates had fluctuated to the point that some people were optimistic. Although the unusually heavy snowfall had interrupted the plans of many, the holiday season was not without merriment. People who had spent the past two months in their homes eating canned food now went out to see family and take in the Christmas lights. Some went to church. Many of them had put their calendar-watching aside. They’d stopped waiting, if only for a week. In the middle of the night, fireworks were going off again, startling Rieux from sleep.
On Christmas day, the doctor invited his new friends over for Chinese hot pot. The phone rang as the first loads of watercress and beef were placed in the bubbling broth. Mrs Rieux was closest to the phone in the living room. She handed it to her son.